Have a question for Tim?

Brandon Johnson is a basketball tornado. Fearless and flawed, bold and hasty, he plays the game with the headstrong fury of a force of nature that has found itself trailing by 10 points with one minute to go.

And, man, do the USD Toreros miss him. They miss his skill. They miss his spirit. They miss his willingness to take the telling shot, to seize the moment even in the absence of a firm grip.

“You never know if you can make it if you don't take it,” the rehabilitating point guard said. “If I make it, what are they going to say? I know what they'll say if I miss it. But if I make it, it changes the whole perspective of that shot. You've got to take that chance.”

The glaring difference between last year's NCAA Tournament Toreros and the team that finished its regular season at 15-15 with yesterday's 58-47 loss to No. 17 Gonzaga is the Achilles' tendon Johnson ruptured Dec. 6 at San Diego State.

Without him, USD has lacked for leadership, bravado, points and purpose. Whatever his shortcomings, Johnson is a guy who wants the ball when it matters most, who takes the tough shot in traffic, who revels in responsibility. He is one of those players who may be easier to appreciate in absentia.

“There's no question that Brandon sometimes gets into situations in games where he'll over-penetrate or try to do a little too much,” USD coach Bill Grier said. “I think that goes back to his undying belief that he can score and he can do everything possible for us to win.

“He does have some stubbornness to him. Sometimes, he would break from the plan because he thought he could use his quickness. But you also have to let a guy with his quickness and his abilities to break from the plan. . . . He just has an ability to score. He can get by guys.”

Though Johnson is a senior who has not played in 12 weeks, Grier continues to speak of him in the present tense because of the NCAA's recent relaxation of its medical waiver rules. Because his season ended in his eighth game, before he had played in 30 percent of his team's regular-season games, Johnson can expect to be granted another year of eligibility when the West Coast Conference Executive Council considers his case in June.

He is not all that keen on spending another year in the classroom and away from his son in Texas, but USD's once and future point guard is grateful for the opportunity to finish his college basketball career on his feet and, perhaps, to enhance his prospects for playing professionally.

“I feel like I owe it to them,” Johnson said of his teammates while seated on a training table at the Jenny Craig Pavilion. “I don't think they felt that I let them down, but I think everybody was expecting me to bounce back up (after the injury). I wanted to get up so bad, man.

“We lost a lot of games this year. I feel like we can clean it up next year. . . . We lost a couple of players, and a lot of players got injured, but we still go out and battle every night like nothing's happened. I feel like we can come back next year and make it happen again.”

Johnson led the Toreros in both scoring (16.9 points per game) and assists (3.5) as a junior, and he was averaging 13.5 points and 3.6 assists when he left the floor with 2:24 remaining in the first half of USD's Dec. 6 game at Cox Arena.

Typically, rehabbing a ruptured Achilles' is a six-month proposition. As Johnson nears the midway mark, walking is still a chore and running is not yet an option.

“The moment he went down, I knew what the injury was,” Grier said. “The first thing I thought was he was done, that this is awful, that is not the way this kid should end his career. My heart sunk, first and foremost for him, and then for this group because I knew how much he meant to us.”

Grier would not know until later that Johnson had been injured early enough in the season to qualify for the medical hardship, but he immediately understood the impact on his team. He knew that Johnson was one player who could create his own shot near the end of the shot clock, that his ability to beat opponents off the dribble created opportunities other players could not easily replicate and that his overt enthusiasm had trickle-down benefits for the team. He knew he had no one else who could will the team to a victory as Johnson had done in playing every minute of a double-overtime game against Saint Mary's.

“He's a guy you never have to get on to go harder in practice because he only goes one way and it's full-bore,” Grier said. “When we lost that fire and drive that he has, there wasn't another guy with a strong enough personality within this group to step up and be that guy.”

Johnson saw this, too, and felt the friction that led to the suspensions of key players and the impending transfer of his heir apparent, Trumaine Johnson. He sensed that the Toreros were prone to lapses in intensity, and that they weren't having enough fun.

“I think sometimes, when they're playing basketball, they look at it as a job,” he said.

Brandon Johnson looks at basketball as a joy, and plays each game as if he might never get to play again. Think of him as a tornado temporarily down for repairs.